


murder victim xox

by agivise



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Study, Mystery, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, basically just raiden being an absolute disaster 24/7, this spooky cyborg boy is such a drama queen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: Look. Objectively, he should be panicking. That would be a pretty threatening email even if itwasn’tfrom a “murder victim” claiming to be from his past, which certainly can’t be a great omen for his near future.But, like, he’s murdered lots of people. If this really is someone he “killed”, he clearly managed it pretty well once, so he can probably do it again with relative ease.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> new fic WOO this one's gonna be a lovely mess  
> warnings are the same as usual for my shit. swearing, mild blood and gore, my typical brand of dark humour.  
> today's song recs: season 2 episode 3 by glass animals and btstu by jai paul

i.

He should drink more.

Well, he _shouldn’t_ , but he definitely wants to. Maybe. Probably not. Vodka’s fun, right? He can’t remember. With the first new body, it was. But now? With the newer organs? He could probably shotgun a liquor store and barely get a buzz, especially now that the vast majority of the meat making up his meat shell has been replaced with plastic and metal. He’s pretty sure his “liver” would filter the alcohol out of his “blood” after the first few “heartbeats.”

He needs to make up new words to call the facsimiles that make up his body, or at least the core of it. Maybe he’ll call his lungs _respirators_ and his blood _mercury._ They wouldn’t be accurate names, sure, but they’d fit the tone of his thoughts much better than the human meat words that he uses out of pure convenience.

These organs were handcrafted by someone. That thought always amuses him. Some poor sap probably sat in a lab, huddled over a pile of surgeon’s photographs, molding expensive, boring alloys and plastic threads into the approximate shapes of stomaches and hearts and spleens. What the hell do spleens do? Did they bother giving him a spleen? He has a very vague idea of the inner workings of his current body, mostly gained from having been gutted and gored repeatedly over the course of the last few year. Certainly not enough to know whether or not he has a spleen. Whatever the hell a spleen actually is.

He could always just cut on in and see. It’s not like he’d feel it. Sure, it might kill him, but it’d certainly be an interesting death. Getting stabbed by a stranger is unfashionable. Gutting yourself to get a good look at your own organs is the new, hip trend.

That’s something he finds exceptionally odd about his designs, past and present. There are a million ways to give a person one hell of a robot body. They could’ve given him machine gun eyes and homing dagger hands. Hell, they could’ve stuck his brain in some indestructible eight-legged robot beast and had him live his life as a giant metal murder-spider. Even if they really felt like sticking to the human element, real lungs and real skeletons are a hell of a lot easier to come by than mechanical ones. It would’ve been so easy to transform him into something _efficient_.

What they did to him wasn’t any of these things. He’s fucking _great_ at killing, sure, but he was good at it before this nonsense was done to him. If they wanted a mission-completing machine, they wouldn’t have bothered with petty design details like blood and skin. Blood is a stupid thing for a near-robot cyborg to have. And skin exists for the sole purpose of looking presentable to civilians, something which the silvery seams at his joints and the pointed metal teeth lining his mandible directly counteract. Not to mention the armor he’s expected to layer across his limbs and torso, and the red LEDs hidden behind his retinas, which have been apparently rigged up to his brain such that they power on under specifically emotional states. Fucking absurd. Whose fucking idea was the glowing red lights? How could that possibly help anyone in battle? Or life? Or anything?

Cyborg technology was invented for two reasons: restoration and enhancement. For a while, he’d assumed the original experiments that took his body away were done for the sake of furthering one or both of these. He was just practice for future designs, right? So if they later needed to give some top-notch teammate a new body, it’d be just like the old one, or if they wanted to build an army of lethal super soldier cyborgs, they’d know what works and what doesn’t.

The people who built this body didn’t build it with the intent of it being good or useful. They built it with the intent of it being cool as shit. They built it because one day some bored scientist woke up and decided they’d build a cool fucking robot body and slap the nearest central nervous system into the cockpit. The fact that this nervous system happened to be Raiden’s was mostly just chance. Chance, and the fact that no one would ever be stupid enough to willingly chop off the entirety of their body for some asshole’s pet project. Helpless prisoners are much easier for scientists to cut out of their meat shells and toss into fancy metal ones.

Sure, his body’s been swapped around and renewed and upgraded _plenty_ over the years, but the basic principal still stands, even if his form is mostly custom at this point. Having a say in _which_ experimental tech makes up your makeshift body doesn’t make it any less of an experiment. He’s just glad it’s always been relatively easy to adapt to. The sensory fuck-ups have been a hassle, but, hey, whatever. At least he has legs and a torso and shit. Sometimes even arms. (Alright, _always_ arms. He can’t blame the scientists for that one. It was mostly his own fault when those got temporarily slashed off. And the sword-between-teeth thing was extremely fucking fun.)

But the human aspect is still interesting, though. Well, “human” aspect. It’s less like someone tried to design a fake human body with melodramatic sci-fi bullshit enhancements, and more like an alien got sent one double-spaced, times-new-roman, twelve-point sheet of paper describing what a human is supposed to look and function like and tried to recreate it with spare UFO parts. Even more so with the first cyborg body, which he has eloquent dubbed Body Number Two.

It’s cool, it’s great, whatever, he’s grateful for the upgrades he’s been able to snag and all, he appreciates the technology, grand, great, fucking _lovely._ But obviously he misses his body, his real one, from so many years ago. Prime body. Body One. That was _his_ body. What bitches. He loved that body.

He wonders what those original little bastards did with it when they finished ripping out his face and brain and spine to stick into a robot. They better as hell have at least donated the organs.

Actually, wait. Wait a second. Are these organs, his current organs, the robot ones, even new ones? Have they just been augmentations of his original organs the whole time? The blood’s obviously new. His skeleton. All the muscles, and thus his heart, naturally. His skin, for the most part, aside from the line along his back and the top half of his head, which have been fucked with plenty by various pieces of software anyways. But that doesn’t necessarily mean every other organ was made from scratch. It’s possible that they kept some bits and pieces of his human meat and crafted synthetics around them.

He learned once that some of the earliest attempts at custom organs were just synthetic cells placed over the shell of what had once been a living organ. It was rudimentary, sure, but it worked like a fucking charm. Maybe he’s that now. False tissues crafted over the skeletons of the reals ones.

That would be fucking wild.

It’s _almost_ enough of a curious twinge to convince him to grab a kitchen knife and cut on in to see for himself.

He’s stockpiled plenty of his blood in his apartment over the past few months, a contingency supply in case he almost bleeds out. Again. It took a while to siphon it out without overworking his system. The tech in his body is able to produce new blood just like a human body would be able to, but it does so far more slowly. Living blood cells die off constantly and need to be replaced, so human body make new ones constantly and rapidly in comparison. He’s not sure _what_ his blood is, but it sure as hell ain’t made of living cells, or if it is, they don’t seem to… well, die. Do living things still count as alive if they’re incapable of dying? Who fucking knows. He’s not a philosopher.

And since the scientists’ve _somehow_ , after god knows how many years he’s spent in this godawful body, not given him cutaneous senses, then _clearly_ nobody gives a shit about replicating humanity anymore. Pain is intrinsic to humanity. Touch is intrinsic to humanity. And they’re all literally just too fucking lazy to program that shit back into his system, apparently. He knows it’s possible. They’ve fucking _told_ him it’s possible. Some random employee at one of the tech firms he contacted once spilled that the hardware’s all there, already incorporated in the false skin. That they just have to write the fucking code to his personal specs and send it over.

And, hell, if the bad guys were capable of shutting off the nerves in his remaining human skin to even it all out with Body Number Two, then surely the neutral guys can turn them back on for… this one. Number Four? Five, maybe? He’s not sure where the line should be drawn. If every upgrade or repair counted as a new body, he’d be in the hundreds by now. Or dozens. Or thousands. He stopped counting at ten, if he’s completely honest. With as many different groups and associations and tech firms and doctors as have worked on his body, it’s tough to keep track.

But when he asks developers, they mostly just think he’s kidding, because they’re assholes who for _some_ reason can’t comprehend that, guess fucking what, pain is pretty _fucking_ important for living a normal life. Hell, it’s useful for an _abnormal one._ But, _no_ , they just can’t look past the big picture. Pain isn’t cool or efficient, so they don’t bother.

He hasn’t physically felt anything in years. He still has kinesthesis, thank god, or he’d be a hell of a lot worse at moving around, but it’s not even close to the same. He can tell when he’s in contact with an object or surface, but he can’t actually feel it. He knows when segments of his body are injured — it “feels” unpleasant, which they programmed in solely so he could tell if he needed to heal or repair something. He knows when he’s wounded or when he’s touching something, the same way a blind bat knows exactly what’s in front of it by echolocating instead of seeing. It’s a sense to replace pain. But it’s not pain. It’s not sensation. He doesn’t feel it. It doesn’t _hurt._ He wants it to _hurt._

His spine is the only thing that doesn’t feel like a hospital smells. He still doesn’t have sensation there, but if he injures it badly enough, there’s a phantom of a real feeling, like his nerves know that they’re supposed to do something, but they’ve forgotten what it is.

He fights alone, sure, but that doesn’t mean he has to keep every aspect of his life free from association with tech developers. He found a place named Pantherinae, or maybe they found him. It’s symbiotic. They get a nice new lab rat for their programmers and engineers, and he get sick new upgrades and modifications once every month or so. Maybe once in a while they need someone to disappear. Maybe he helps them out with that, too. It’s not on paper.

Occasionally they’ll just send some tinier software files to him via email, as a miniature thank you gift after he finishes his unofficial assignments, and he’ll hook them into his system on his own. They’re useless, for the most part, but occasionally it’s something interesting.

About a week and a half ago, they sent him a file patch for his sight. Normally he doesn’t bother reading the descriptions. The surprise tends to be more fun if he doesn’t know the specs of the modifications. It’s like a little game for him. He downloads it into his body’s code, and he tries to guess exactly what’s been changed before looking back at the email and seeing if he got it right. They’re usually pretty easy.

But at first, when he piped in the new string of programming, he genuinely couldn’t tell the difference. Or, he could, but he couldn’t pinpoint what the difference actually was. Things that were out of focus in his field of view looked a little… prettier? More vibrant, maybe? But the second he looked directly at the thing, nothing was changed anymore. Another lap around his apartment didn’t clarify anything. It seemed like a _nice_ change, but a subtle one.

He’s happy with it, but he’s not sure what he’s happy about.

Stubbornly, he’s so far refused to just read over the email and find out what it was. But it’s been over a week, and he’s getting impatient, and he still doesn’t have a single good guess. So he cheats at his little game, and pulls the fucker back up on his laptop to find out once and for all.

 

> From: Pantherinae Inc.   
>  Received: Ten days ago  
>  Subject: File_36634b
> 
> Hello Raiden,
> 
> Thank you once again. We here at Pantherinae are very grateful. We’ve attached a token of our appreciation.
> 
> This file contains a minor visual modification, which you may download at your own discretion. Programmer comments are posted below the cut and do not necessarily reflect official Pantherinae statements.
> 
> attachment: one file(s) [opened]
> 
> //wassup raidennn!!! our fave dude. our main man. this one’s not an augmentation, so much as it is a bug fix. we found a bit of a goof in your original code! (-_-;) it was an error anyone could’ve made (except 4 us bc we’re cool) but we fixed it now so congrats ur welcome.
> 
> bASICALLY what happened is that when ur artificial eyes take in light, they take the square root of the energy values in order to mimic the normal human range of sight (human eyes see small changes in dim light better than in bright light, it’s weird science shit u probably won’t care). so when ur eyes blur things that are out of focus they calculate the average color over specific areas but basically someone Screwed Up and had ur system average the values post-rooting instead of pre-rooting. it made blurry things uglier/muckier basically. lots of computers screw this up we’re not super surprised urs did too.
> 
> we fixed the math now so ull see out of focus things all pretty and good again just like ur real eyes used to do! ( ´ ω ` )
> 
> —love, the coolest peeps at pantherrrr (dont tell the engineers we said that, alice is still mad at us and also greg is being greg)

 

Ah. He’s sure that would be a lot more interesting to someone who gives a fuck about computers. He doesn’t need to care about computers. He practically is one.

But it’s a neat little bug fix, and the Pantherinae programmers are basically the closest thing his has to friends right now, so reading their wonderfully unprofessional notes is always a joy.

He clicks back out into his inbox and sees something he’s not exactly used to. He hasn’t killed any — cough, cough — done any “work” for them since the last file he downloaded, so they usually wouldn’t have sent him anything else over email. They have his number if they needed something or had a schedule change. But here these are, right in his inbox anyways.

 

> From: Pantherinae Inc.  
>  Received: Today at 2:32 AM  
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> what a surprise it wwas to see your contact information in their databases. i would not have gessed you to be the kind of person to work with them.. to be fair i did not expect for me to be here either[, but this is for other reasons. probably much better than your reasons.
> 
> they will not be to happ.y that i sent this from there computers, but who can blame me? they love me here. they will forgive me soon enough. also they very much did not want me to send this file, no?; so i sent it anysways because fuck it. i'm sure you will appreciate it.
> 
> fikdik you should, tbio, hide your perrsonal informtaion better, lest your past demons come back to haunt you. or something. haha.
> 
> sdds
> 
> murder victim xox
> 
> //attachment: one file(s) [unopened]

 

Which had been followed immediately by —

 

> From: Pantherinae Inc.   
>  Received: Today at 2:41 AM  
>  Subject: Our apologies
> 
> Obviously, we did not send that last email. Another associate of ours decided to contact your using one of our accounts after finding a file of your information. He insisted he was an old friend of yours who had lost contact with you years ago. We trust him as an associate, of course, but naturally, we’re not just going to buy his story. We’ll sit down and have a talk with him about misuse of company equipment and personal information.
> 
> We hope he hasn’t caused you any trouble. If this is more concerning of an infringement than he is making it out to be, or if you otherwise request so, more serious consequences may be in order. Pantherinae thrives on cooperation and trust.
> 
> You may view the file he attached if you wish, but it will likely be of no interest to you, as it is not particularly a helpful string of code. Please be cautious, as we would not recommend downloading the file onto your biometric system.
> 
> We’re very sorry for this slip-up. Please contact us if you have any complaints or concerns.
> 
> —Management Team B

 

Hmm.

Look. Objectively, he should be panicking. That would be a pretty threatening email even if it _wasn’t_ from a “murder victim” claiming to be from his past, which certainly can’t be a great omen for his near future.

But, like, he’s murdered lots of people. If this really is someone he “killed”, he clearly managed it pretty well once, so he can probably do it again with relative ease.

He’s unconcerned. Interested, sure, but unconcerned. Weirder things have happened over the past few years. He’s a fucking cyborg, for god’s sake. And honestly, he’s a little bored with his life right now. He needs some good drama.

This could be fun.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god the formatting on this is quite the task to type up but its still fun  
> how's it going y'all   
> today's song recs: theres still us by swell and lovit by marian hill

ii.

 

> To: Pantherinae Inc.   
>  Sent: Today at 3:20 AM   
>  Subject: …   
>  Re: Our apologies
> 
> No need to worry abt it. I dont mind too much. I am curious tho. Why couldnt he have jst used his own email address??,, If he already found (stole???) my contact info he couldve jst messaged me from his own account? idk
> 
> Also whats his whole deal w you guys? Does he do what i do basically or smthng different or are you jst not allowed to tell me?((

 

He wanders off to his kitchen to turn on the kettle and switch on some lights. Another message is in his inbox when he returns.

 

> From: Pantherinae Inc.    
>  Received: Today at 3:24 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]   
>  Re: …
> 
> We asked him and he said, and we quote, “To be more dramatic.”
> 
> For confidentiality reasons, we probably shouldn’t share his exact relationship to us, but for your troubles, we’ll tell you this: his position is similar to yours, but not identical. He also tends to work face to face with us, rather than remotely, hence his proximity to our computers with our files and accounts.
> 
> —Management Team B

 

And as he’s reading this, a second message pops up.

 

> From: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Received: Today at 3:25 AM   
>  Subject: >:(
> 
> you made them shout at me! whqt did you tell them you jerk. first you kill me now this? you are rude, raiden. so cruel.
> 
> also what is uyour adress i am dying of boredom
> 
> —murder victim xox

 

He sighs, rolls his eyes, and brings his laptop with him while he pours the hissing kettle water into a chipped teacup. Three bags of tea steeping in one cup of water: spiced chai, jasmine, and Irish breakfast. It’ll taste like shit, but it’ll taste like _something_ , which is always nice. He leaves it on the counter and lets it sit for a while, tapping his metal nails gently along the edge of the porcelain.

 

> To: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Sent: Today at 3:32 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> 8318b W Asterlook Street

 

He grabs his sword and tries to balance it on the teacup. It’s not working very well. Some of the tea spills over the edge.

 

> From: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Received: Today at 3:32 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]   
>  Re: [no subject]
> 
> well that was easy. i was jok,ing mostly

 

He balances the sword on the kettle instead. That’s much easier. Trying to balance the teacup on top of both is a far more dextrous task.

 

> To: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Sent: Today at 3:38 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> There are maybe 2 ppl on earth who could beat me in a fight and im prtty sure ur neither of them so :/ not super worried abt it tbh

 

> From: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Received: Today at 3:40 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> alrigt that was un called for. i was not going to fight you originaly but now i definitely am.! also how do you knwo i am not 1 of the 2. i could be 1 of them

 

> To: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Sent: Today at 3:45 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> Because the first is snake and the second is probably snake’s dad (so also snake) and not only are they both extremely and permanently dead, i killed neither
> 
> Plus snake wouldn’t type like a twelve year old on xbox live

 

> From: topqfaca@imail.com   
>  Received: Today at 3:47 AM   
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> why would anyone kill a snake>? theyare gentle creatures. they are legless pasta boys./
> 
> and shu,t your mnouth typing good is for COWArds! also it is 4 give me a break why are you not sleepign. cyborg or not you still have a human brain. it may be stupid ugly lame brain but it is a brain regardless

 

That clears… a little bit up, at least.

If this guy is telling the truth — and that’s a big _if_ — then Raiden knows several things about him.

This guy isn’t lying or mistaken about knowing him. And yet, he seemingly doesn’t know about Snake. Which is strange, considering how long Raiden spent being the Watson to Snake’s Holmes. Selective amnesia? Memory alteration? Technically possible, but that would be pretty fucking random. Someone he ran into in his personal life? He did an exceptionally poor job of keeping that separate from his work life, so probably not. More likely, this is someone he met over the past couple years. That’s the most important limiting factor of identity.

And then there’s the cyborg comment. And the fact that he, in one way or another, works alongside a cybernetics company. The same one Raiden’s with. _Small world._ This guy knows enough about cyborgs to know that their need for sleep is affected, but not enough to know the specifics. He’s either not a cyborg or has only recently become one. That, or almost none of his body has been replaced. Why work alongside people who develop cyborg tech, then? What deal has been worked out between him and Pantherinae?

He’s definitely a more recent acquaintance, though. His old Maverick coworkers would know about the Snakes, naturally, even if they’re just rumors. This guy types even worse than Raiden does, so he’s _probably_ not any of the politicians whose asses he’s kicked over the years. Then again, most of them were incompetent pricks, so he can’t rule them all out to quickly. And he’s probably not a full-blown cyborg. Which limits the suspect pool down to nearly nil.

Regardless of this — regardless of whoever this “murder victim” is — the motivation is still… odd. Why now? If Raiden “killed” him, how’s he still alive? Does he actually want to fight? Is he trying to be funny? Is he trying to make amends?

Maybe he’s doing just what Raiden’s doing. Fucking around while the world goes to shit. A little boredom, a little apathy, and just the slightest bit of loneliness.

And then his phones rings.

“Who is this?” he says with a tinge of malice, picking up before the first ring is even over.

“Hey, Rai!”

His voice softens and he smiles, dropping the sword to the counter and placing his hand flatly against the countertop. “Sunny. What’s up, buttercup? Why are you awake?”

“Because it’s almost seven in the morning, silly. I always get up early.” He can’t see her, but he’s sure a proud smile flashes across her face. “I’m teaching myself vector calculus. It’s really cool.”

“Seven. Ah. You guys are over on the east coast now?”

“Sure are! Only for a little bit, though.” She’s quiet for a second, like she’s paused to think. “Oh, shoot. It’s probably the middle of the night where you’re at. I’m so sorry, Raiden, did I wake you up?”

“No, of course not, sweetie. Why are you calling? Everything alright with Hal?”

“Nah, Dad’s fine. I just wanted to check up. We haven’t talked in, like, forever!”

He paces around a bit, hoping the light clicks of his feet don’t register on the phone’s microphone. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I was thinking about flying out and saying hi to you two sometime soon. Same with Rose and John.”

“That’d be super cool. We’re actually staying in the same city as Rose and John, and they let me help them cook dinner last night. I even made spinach, which sounds gross, but it was really good. Dad was banned from the kitchen, though.”

He laughs and crinkles his nose. “What’d he do to get banned?”

“He though that preheating the oven was ‘optional’ so I kicked him out.”

“You’re eleven and already putting sanctions on the kitchen. You’re gonna rule the world one day, kiddo, you know that?”

“Eleven and a half! And yes, I know.”

He rolls his eyes and peeks into the fridge, and then along his bookshelf. “I just talked to Rose a couple days ago, but John was at school. How’s he doing? Are you making friends with him?”

“Nah, boys are lame,” she jokes. “I dunno. He seems fine, but we didn’t really talk. He doesn’t even care about science! He just likes movies and video games. And not even the cool ones like I like.”

“Oh, c’mon, you didn’t talk at all?” he teases. “You’re too young be a recluse.”

She pauses. “Wait, we did talk about this one thing! He has a crush on a girl!”

Raiden sighs, still smiling. “Oh, no. Please tell me you told him that girls have cooties.”

“No, I just told him that if he didn’t chop the garlic more finely, I’d steal her from him, and then she’d have a crush on me instead of him, and then he’d _never_ get a girlfriend.”

He laughs. She’s _actually_ gonna rule the world some day. “And what’d he say to that?”

“Nothing. He did definitely chop the garlic more finely, though.”

“You’re too clever for your own good sometimes. But seriously, do ask Hal about that visit. I want to spend some time with you guys next time I’m not busy.”

“He’s probably still sleeping, but I can just ask Snake if —“

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Did you just say ’Snake’?”

She’s dead silent for a long moment. “I… didn’t say that. I said… _steak!_ Yeah, I’m gonna go grab some steak from the grocery store. I didn’t say Snake, ha, sorry, just a slip-up. Bye, Raiden!”

“Sunny, wait, wait, don’t hang up, what do you mean you can just —“

She hangs up.

God _damn_ it.

He tries to call back. It rings and rings no one picks up. He tries once more, and then twice, and three times, the chilly echo of the ring bouncing off the kitchen walls. He sighs, pulls up his messages, and sends a string of texts.

_raiden [4:01 AM]: Tell hal to call me when he wakes up_

_raiden [4:01 AM]: We clearly have a lot to talk about_

_raiden [4:05 AM]: Dont u dare leave me on read sunny_

_raiden [4:06 AM]: Im not kidding_

If this is Sunny still reeling from Snake’s death from over four years ago, that’s problem enough. That’s worrying. Unhealthy. That’s something he definitely needs to talk to Hal about. But if this is something else, something that they’re hiding from him —

God, this better as _hell_ not be tied in with all the other bullshit drama that’s sparked over the past few hours. But then again, which would be worse? Doubly complicated drama? Or two separate mysteries that just happen to be simultaneously causing chaos in his usually wearisome life? That would be a nightmare. He really hopes it’s not the latter. One he can deal with. Two is pushing it.

He huffs into the still air and grabs a random book from the shelf. A French-English dictionary. Boring. He grabs another. Ray Bradbury. Much better.

His phone screen flashes.

_sunny [4:15 AM]: alright ill tell him_

_sunny [4:15 AM]: …_

_sunny [4:15 AM]: fair warning he sleeps in late_

\---


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> existence is so busy for me rn im sleepyyy but hey new chapter
> 
> today's song recs: lovesick fuck by mura masa and genghis khan by mike snow

iii.

He _could_ sleep.

He’s not incapable of doing so, of course. Maybe. Probably. Mystery Guy was at least a little bit right. Mostly-human brain means basic human brain necessities, to an extent, no matter how slight.

But that’s exactly the issue — the _necessity_ part. Specifically, the lack thereof.

He _could_ sleep. But he doesn’t need to. His organs don’t need the same rest that meat-organs do. They used to, in a way, in older iterations of his body. Even in the more recent ones, built almost entirely of sturdy steel and augmented blood, an hour-or-two nap each night was standard, routine, if only done out of tradition.

But now? Now’s different.

He tested once, several months ago, not long after he acquired the newest model of his body, the one he wears now. It may or may not have begun as an unintentional test (nightmares are a bitch), but it yielded some valid observations nonetheless. The memories he had of old all-nighters in his youth, that aching dread that always accompanied exhaustion — it was _gone._ But it wasn't all cut and dry.

On day two of no sleeping, his brain was telling him that he was sleepy. He didn’t feel it, though. He just knew that it was true, the same way he knows a gunshot wound "hurts" even without a fully equipped nervous system. It wasn't miserable. Just tense. Just uneasy.

By day four, the mimic-pain was warning him as loudly as it could, trying desperately to convince him to sleep. Like caffeine in reverse. He felt like shit, in a strange and foreign way that he hadn't expected in the slightest. But curiosity called him more intensely than the compulsive mental obligation to rest, so he stayed up, scribbling little observations into a packet of post-it notes with a stack of dog-eared books by his side.

One week in, and he was staring to get excited. His human body would’ve never gotten to that point, and if it had, he would've been dead, long dead, _total organ failure_ dead, the kind of dead that makes your liver shut down and your fingernails fall off and your heart stop pumping that precious, precious oxygen around to its precious, precious cells. But there he was, up and about, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, without a care in the world. Alright, _several_ cares, but nothing extreme. His brain was confused, startled even, still trying to tell him that he realistically shouldn’t be conscious. The poor mimic-pain system was practically screaming at him, but without any genuine harm to his body or mind to point to, it felt less like a sword to the gut and more like his brain was getting claustrophobic.

At the end of day ten, he was in tip-top shape all over again. No false pain, no urge to lay down and shut the lights off, no shakiness in his mind, no heavy eyelids. He felt… completely neutral, but in a nice way. Not like he was refreshed, not like he’d just woken up from a long slumber. Just like someone had taken a tiny submarine into his body and flipped the “sleep” switch to off.

He read somewhere that there was an old study done, where they took civilians and put them in glasses that made them see the whole world upside-down for ten days. They spent those ten days bumping into things and twisting things around to read them right. But after those ten days passed, their brain made the necessary corrections, and to them, everything looked right-side-up again.

And then they took off the glasses, and saw the world as it was, and everything looked like it was upside-down again. Ten more days passed, and their brains made the adjustments — as brains tend to do — and in their eyes, the world was back to normal. Like nothing had ever changed.

He hasn’t slept once since his little experiment. He’s worried that if he does, his brain will reset. Default settings. And he’d have to do those ten days all over again. It’d be nothing serious, just a slight hassle, but he’s never been fond of those.

He wonders what it is about ten days that’s so special.

What fucks does the universe give about arbitrary human measurements of time? What law of physics hooked up ten days as a universal constant for hard resets of the human brain? Or is it just a strange coincidence? There are lots of numbers in the world. Occasionally they mirror each other in odd ways, and occasionally people assign false meanings to these patterns. Raiden's not exempt from this. 

Anyways, it’s 4:30 and he’s already incredibly bored of waiting for something to happen. Fifteen minutes feels like a fucking eternity now.

Because that’s the shitty thing about not sleeping. He now has six more waking hours every single day, which sounds fan-damn-tastic in theory, but in practice is just immensely, overwhelmingly _boring._ What should he do with six extra hours each day while the rest of the world sleeps? Practice a skill? Learn a new language? Yeah-fucking-right. He spends it reading and complaining and pretending he doesn’t want to curl up into a ball in the corner of the room and scream. Six hours every single day adds up to a lot of time spent trying to find something to do.

Thirty percent more consciousness means two hundred percent more boredom, apparently.

Enough boredom, in fact, that he almost resorted to self-surgery for entertainment a couple hours ago. He needs a fucking hobby. Maybe he’ll learn embroidery. That seems like a pretty non-lethal activity.

That, or he should thrown some fuel on the fire. Shake up some drama. That’s always been his strong suit. And with everything that’s been happening lately, it shouldn’t be too hard, right?

 

> To: topqfaca@imail.com  
>  Sent: Today at 4:33 AM  
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> Are u, like, one of the cyborg cops i killed in denver or something.? Did one of them not actually fully die and thats u and now u want to kill me?? Thats my current guess
> 
> Also if ur so intent on revenge then why are u not here like murdering me or something. Youve had an hour and my heart’s still beating strong. I mean like its a fake heart but its still doing pretty good and it doesn’t seem to have any bullet holes through it as of yet
> 
> Idk just seems like youre being a bit of a coward :)))

 

A minute passes, and then another. No response. For fuck’s sake. People who sleep are so bland. At least he still has “Management Team B” to annoy during everyone else’s shut-eye hours.

Let sleeping dogs lie, though, right? Maybe it’s for the best. Poking an prodding the potentially dangerous is never a particularly great idea. Then again, when has Raiden ever once in his life not actively tried to start little conflicts? It’s one of his less... morally tasteful personality traits.

Maybe he’ll just go out into the sketchiest alleyway he can find and try to get mugged. There’s nothing morally wrong with kicking a mugger in the throat, right? Except maybe that hypothetical mugger is just trying to feed their hypothetical family or buy hypothetical medicine or something. Ugh. Lame-ass moral compass. Just let Raiden fight someone without crushing existential guilt.

He wants to _bleed._ He wants to bleed and hurt and hurt someone else. He wants to find someone pretty to make out with and a motorcycle to race in the streets with and some bones to break clean through but he can’t. He _can't._ Or maybe shouldn’t. Either way, it’s just not an option. Recklessness isn't an option. He's not sure why it's not, but there's something in his chilly metal heart telling him that's the case, and that's how it's gonna stay, barring any extenuating circumstances.

And so he does what he would assume all infamous cyborg supersoldiers do when they get bored.

He watches television on his phone while sprawled out like a cat on his kitchen floor.

He’s always down to watch a good medical drama. He can’t stand the inaccuracies in crime dramas, he doesn’t give a fuck about sitcoms, and trying to relate to gushy coming-of-age stories and slice of life shows — after _his_ childhood? — is a laughable task. He knows just little enough about medicine to not be wholeheartedly frustrated, and just enough to not be constantly lost or detached. The perfect genre for killing time.

Unfortunately, he’s still not a patient man. After one episode (it was lupus the whole time), he’s already bored again, with the inbox to him email pulled open on his phone.

Impulse control is a bitch.

 

> To: Pantherinae Inc.  
>  Sent: Today at 5:20 AM  
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> Is the guy still there?

 

He lays back down onto his side across the tiles, tapping his fingers absently on his lower legs.

His feet are still the least humanoid part of his body. Even with his armor fully off like it is now, everything up to his ankles still looks fully robotic, and from there to halfway up his shins, it’s an unusual amalgamation of mechanical and organic. It gives him a cryptic sort of look, strange and skeletal, like he was caught mid-transformation, a harsh contrast against the otherwise mostly-human appearance of his body. Even his hands look “normal” now, aside from the silvery lines at the joints and the dagger-like points of his nails. But not his lower legs. He’s not sure why he’s left them the way they are for so long.

But that’s not true at all. He knows exactly why. It’s because he loves them. They’re elegant and uncanny and _beautiful._ And they make it just that much easier to kick ass with. He looks cool as shit, at no expense to his ability to fight.

How strange it is, that he’s spent so much energy begrudging his inhuman body, but his favorite portion of his form is the visibly mechanical one.

Whatever. It’s way too late for him to be psychoanalyzing himself. Again.

The clawed toes have left little scratch marks in the floor. He’s sure if he looked closer, he could see the marks from the points of the heels as well.

 

> From: Pantherinae Inc.  
>  Sent: Today at 5:26 AM  
>  Subject: [no subject]  
>  Re: [no subject]
> 
> If by “the guy” you mean the one who emailed you, then yes. He’s asleep in his quarters right now. Would you like us to wake him?
> 
> —Management Team B

 

He smiles faintly, deviously, and lifts himself up into a semi-sitting position, the brunt of his weight supported on his elbow.

 

> To: Pantherinae Inc.   
>  Sent: Today at 5:28 AM  
>  Subject: [no subject]
> 
> Yeah
> 
> yeah that would be great
> 
> tell him to check his email

\---


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooooo time for reveal number 1  
> should i make this fic a lil sexy? i think i should make it at least a little bit sexy. i think it's inevitable.  
> today's song recs: golden antlers by glass animals and no sass by photay

iv.

_? [5:33 am]: are you Fucking Kidding me jjjjjjj_

_? [5:33 am]: you hadd them wakeme up at 5e30_

_? [5:33 am]: to challang me to a \FIGTh_

_? [5:33 am]: MALDITO;’_

_? [5:34 am]: A FACAD]A PARa O INTESTINE \ERA,MAIS GENTIL DO Q ISSO_

_? [5:34 am]: RUDE BO Y_

He smiles and huffs at the rapid flashing of the messages on his phone screen, leaving Mystery Guy to brew for an extended moment before taking the phone back into his hands like a trophy.

_raiden [5:38 am]: I think i can safely assume u snagged my number from my files right_

_? [5:38 am] it is thirty minute walk to yuor place yes? andi am going to KICK you r ASS!_

_? [5:38 am] i wa set even going ato before but now i AM_

_raiden [5:38 am]: Im truly shaking. just dripping in fear._

_? [5:39 am]: sarcastc rude boy_

_? [5:39 am]: this is harassmetn_

_raiden [5:39 am]: If i remember correctly_

_raiden [5:39 am]: YOU were the one who broke into MY personal files._

The little ellipsis that indicates the other person is typing pops up, and then after a pause vanishes, before appearing once again and staying for a while. He takes the opportunity to put the stranger’s number into his contacts, changing the name from ’murder boy’ to ‘robocop??’ to ‘prick’ to ‘xox’ to a collection of increasingly obscure and random emojis, before finally settling on a short, sweet ‘him’, and shutting it off again.

He’s curious as to what the stranger has set Raiden as in his contacts, if he has at all. Maybe just his name. He wonders which one.

The screen flashes sky blue.

_him [5:45 am]: fuck you and your logic. rude boy._

_raiden [5:46 am]: Was that french or spanish btw?_

_raiden [5:46 am]: I speak both_

_raiden [5:46 am]: And i still have no fucking idea what you said_

_him [5:47 am]: are you stupid_

_him [5:47 am]: have i misremembered our nice thoughtful convnersations_

_him [5:47 am]: i do not remembr you being this stupid_

_raiden [5:47 am]: Excuse me what_

_him [5:47 am]: have you Completely forgotten that i am from brazil_

_raiden [5:48 am]: Buddy i still don’t know who the fuck you are_

_raiden [5:48 am]: So until u tell me, youre officially robocop from brazil_

_him [5:49 am]: what the fuck is robockop_

_raiden [5:49 am]: So u speak brazil then, thats cool_

_him [5:50 am]: please for th love of all things holy_

_him [5:50 am]: tell me you are joking_

_raiden [5:50 am]: Lmao just kidding i know its called portuguese_

_him [5:51 am]: oh gracas a deus/_

A soft pelting of rain has begun outside. It’s not particularly unusual for the season, but amalgamated with the spring cold fronts and whipping breezes from the distant shore, it could easily spin into a proper storm.

He misses really feeling the rain. It was always a welcome bite. Now it’s just an annoyance that tangles his hair, bringing an icy humidity to the dark air that twists his hair into wispy waves.

_raiden [6:04 am]: Hows ur walk going_

_him [6:05 am]: urgh you keep making me tak e my phone into athe rain_

_him [6:05 am]: but it is going well. i walk pretyy quickly. the sun s rising soon._

_him [6:06 am]: i very much wis/h that i had worn a jacket however_

_him [6:09 am]: this is a verry pretty neighbourhood. i am tempted to stop atthe coffee store._

_him [6:11 am]: would you like a coffee_

_him [6:12 am]: i promise iwill only poison it a little bit :)_

He considers the offer. Considers the chances of that only being a joke. Considers how incredible hard he is to poison even if the guy’s serious.

He likes sweet things. And while caffeine can’t help him, it can’t hurt him either. A nasty enough poison probably could, but this guy doesn’t seem the type to premeditate that sort of thing.

_raiden [6:13 am]: Get me the most disgustingly sweet drink on the menu._

_him [6:13 am]: unsweetend cafe espresso it is then_

_him [6:13 am]: you owe me 2.09 pretty boy_

Huh. That’s odd.

The only one who’s ever called him _pretty boy_ is currently a metal-armed skeleton rotting out in the Colorado badlands.

There’s a flicker of a feeling at the base of his skull that he can’t quite identify. It’s somewhere between the lines of feverish hope and overwhelming, agonizing dread, or maybe it’s both, or maybe there just isn’t a word for it in any of the languages he’s learned over the years. He pushes back the feeling of sickness and hops up onto the kitchen island, letting his eyelids flutter closed in an attempt to sooth his disquiet, angling his body towards the front door with his fingers on the edges of the counter.

It’s a meditative moment, almost, or it would be if his blood wasn’t churning with a toxic anxiousness.

Raindrops rasp on the window as a single beam of deep orange, clouded sun hits the wall behind him in sharp angles, warming the otherwise blueish-green glow of the room, but it vanishes just a moment later, cloaked behind the growing storm outside. He breathes in tandem with the faint hints of wind outside and does nothing else for what feels like either eight seconds or an eon, but nowhere in between. Most of his mental processing is even better than it was before. His timekeeping, however, is as bad as it’s always been.

He hears gentle-footed steps a decent distance away from the door — one of the perks of augmented hearing — and stands, forging the closest approximation of indifference he can onto his face and leaning back against the counter’s edge. And then there’s another set of footsteps, less elegant and so very far from human. A quadruped. Judging by the sound, one made of metal.

And he begins to worry. One vengeance-driven weirdo is manageable. A vengeance-driven weirdo plus a literal killing machine? Not so much.

He shuts his eyes and takes a deep, irritatingly artificial breath as the door handle clicks and the door swings open casually, like he fucking lives here, like this is normal. This bastard didn’t even bother knocking. Look who’s rude, _now,_ fucker.

“What? Not even a _hello?”_ taunts an impossibly sugary and venomous voice, sweetly accented, and it’s unmistakable, _absolutely_ unmistakable. Raiden doesn’t even need to open his eyes, really. It couldn’t belong to anyone else. But — it couldn’t belong to — to _him,_ either. Because that would be fucking absurd and nightmarish and not fucking possible. Because he is, without the slightest fucking doubt, dead. And ghosts aren’t fucking real, so this is just ridiculous.

He puts his hand over his eyes in exasperation and confusion and just leaves it there for a while. The steps move a bit closer to him, cool and vitriolic, and Raiden senses him hovering close in front of him, hears him set a paper cup down beside him on the counter. The air smells like tar-black coffee and wet dust and windex, but _he_ — _he_ smells like paprika and chocolate and expensive perfume and arson, he smells how orchids look, and he’s standing close enough that the air between them shifts and churns softly, and Raiden is absolutely _not_ okay.

“Not even going to look at me?” asks the voice — _him_ — even though _he_ isn’t here, not here, he _can’t_ be, not in a million fucking years. “Don’t be so rude. You invited me here, yes? At least be hospitable.”

“If I don’t open my eyes,” Raiden says quietly, carefully, “it’s a lot easier to convince myself that I’m just dreaming and you’re not actually here.”

“Aw, you dream of me? So sweet, Jack.”

Raiden grits his teeth at the flippant use of the name and presses himself further back into the edge of the counter. “I. Killed. You.”

“Now look who is catching on.”

He shakes his head, baring his teeth, and lowers his hand. “I stabbed you in the abdomen. Fatally.”

“That you did, pretty boy.”

Raiden’s eyes flash open at the nickname. And he _reels._

There _he_ is, standing there with his dark eyes beaming and rain-soaked hair pulled back into a choppy ponytail, heartbreak-pretty as he’s ever been, and somehow, extraordinarily, very much alive. He looks different, so different without his cybernetic armour, so different in a waterlogged white tee and torn black jeans and leather sneakers, but absolutely and wholeheartedly the _same_ in every way, every aspect. He’s got a second paper cup clutched in right hand, the mechanical one, and he’s hovering his face over the tendrils of twisting steam rising from the coffee, soft breaths disturbing the still air. He blinks slowly, coyly, waiting for a response.

“Hello again, Jack,” he invites after a moment’s pause, leaning even further into Raiden’s personal space.

Raiden stares at him, fierce-eyed and fearful, frozen in place, and takes a single, deep breath.

“Hi, Sam.”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rough translations (i don't speak portuguese so i'm sorry in advance for glaring errors):   
> [maldito] damn you, this is fucking absurd  
> [a facada para o intestino era mais gentil do que esso] the stab to the gut was kinder than this  
> [oh graças a deus] hhhh thank god


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally had a chance to sit down and write for a while, so enjoy this nice long chapter  
> today's song recs: bitter fuck by joji and i just want the truth baby by born cages

v.

When Sam referred to himself as a murder victim, Raiden didn’t think he was being literal in the fucking slightest.

At most, he’d been lead to believe that he’d left someone to maybe-die a while back and they just so happened to survive and shoot an email out in his direction. Or that it was a family member or bitter best friend of some corpse, hellbent on manipulating him into snapping emotionally. Or that the person was just — was just _lying_ or something, he doesn’t fucking know, just not this, not whatever the fuck Sam is, because although his chest is rising and falling with steady breaths and his jaw is flushed with the warm tinge of a pulse under the coating of rainwater, there’s no way this guy is alive, not here, and sure as hell not now.

He’s not free from the ghosts of his past. He’s used to double-taking at people and things that aren’t really there, just memories reassembled by his mildly malfunctioning brain when he gets too caught up in the guilt or regret or stress or just about goddamn anything vaguely reminiscent of strong emotion, if he’s gonna be completely honest. Emotional trauma’s a bitch.

Whatever. He’s gotten used to the mental slip-ups. He still worries the shit out of his friends when he suddenly starts talking to himself or briefly forgets the basics of his surroundings, but they usually get over it a few seconds later, when he apologies profusely and changes the topic to get the little phantom memories to disappear and stow themselves neatly. His friends never seem to mind, just worry. Probably because they do the exact same thing, as often as he does, and twice as theatrically. Hell, he’s probably even _better_ off than the lot of them, emotionally speaking. No more sleep means no more nightmares. Hal, for example, has always been prone to nightmares. Raiden finally has a leg up over him on something.

This, however, doesn’t feel like a nightmare. He fucking wishes it did, because then he could write it off and wake up and forget that any of this shit was even toiling in his mind in the first place. And although this whole moment feels distant and impossible and surreal, he knows deep in his gut that this is happening.

Mostly because his hallucinations never bat their eyes and bring him coffee and steal said coffee to pour into their own cups. That would be a pretty weird falsity for his mind to be whisking up all willy-nilly.

Sam died a year ago, and Sam is now here, in his kitchen, staring at him and drinking coffee, and there’s definitely something that happened between these two facts, but unfortunately Raiden doesn’t have the slightest fucking hint as to what that event was. What matters is the result. Because the result is another serial murderer standing in his goddamn kitchen.

He tries to say something along the lines of _who the fuck are you really, because i personally murdered sam rodrigues with a very large sword out in the middle of the fucking desert,_ but the words his mouth forms instead are nowhere near as relevant and far more concise.

“Get out of my kitchen,” he sputters out instead, pressing the heels of his hands against the ridges of his eye sockets in a desperate attempt to block out every last bit of light.

“No, I don’t think that I…” He freezes. “Are you — are you joking with me? I can’t believe… my god, you are a true disgrace to my honor,” Sam snips, but he’s moved, a few steps to the side, no longer addressing the previous topic.

Raiden sighs and opens his eyes again. Sam’s staring at the stovetop with a vicious glare painted over his face.

“What? You gonna complain about my fuckin’ oven, now? Seriously?”

“No,” bites out Sam, “but I am most certainly going to complain about what you have so disrespectfully placed on top of it.”

“What? I… oh.” He spares a glance at the sword. “Whoops.”

“No, you do not get to brush this off, _Raiden,”_ he says, and the name sounds unnatural and forced when it spills from his tongue. “I grace you with the Murasama as a parting gift upon my death. An inheritance with which to defeat a tyrant. And you use it as a toy?”

“Whoops,” he repeats.

Sam places his hands over his temples, a pained expression on his face. “There is a _teacup_ balanced on top of it. Why is there a teacup balanced on top of it?”

“Ah! That’s where that went. Gimme.” He reaches out to grab the tea, but his hand is swatted away. Sam removes the cup himself and sets it far back on the counter, taking the Murasama swifly into his hands. “Hey. It’s my sword now. You gave it to me and everything.”

“This sword is an heirloom, not a trophy. You didn’t receive it because you slayed me, you  
received it because I entrusted it to you.”

“After you died and the biometric lock reset,” clarifies Raiden, earning himself a dark-eyed glare.

“After you stabbed me in the heart, and I sent Sparky to deliver it to you, to defeat Armstrong with. As a _privilege._ A privilege which you have so blatantly disrespected. Stupid boy.”

“Yes, after I stabbed you in the heart and you died and the biometric lock reset. Which brings me back to my original point. Why the fuck are you alive?” He pauses for a moment, shifting uncomfortable. “And who the hell is Sparky?”

“Sparky. Come,” snarls Sam.

And then, as if the situation wasn’t chaotic enough, three things happen at once.

Sam takes off his shirt. The quadrupedal footsteps begin again out in the hall. And Raiden’s phone rings.

He sighs deeply, shakes his head, and answers the phone.

“Yeah, hi,” he says, and holds the phone with his chin so he can grab his tea.

“Hey, Raiden. Sunny said you wanted to talk to me about something?” asks Hal, the grogginess lacing his voice only exaggerated by the low-quality speaker.

“Not a great time, buddy,” he says, and looks to the door, where — much to his shock and distress — Blade Wolf has just entered. _Blade Wolf?_ Wh— “What… the fuck? Sam, why is _he_ here?”

Sam ignores him and wrings out his hair.

“Greeting, Raiden,” Wolf says.

“Huh?” Hal says.

“Jesus fucking Chirst,” ripostes Raiden, moving the phone back to his hand.

“I kinda have a full schedule twenty-four-seven, so could we maybe _not_ reschedule this call last minute?” asks Hal through the phone.

“Hal, do me a favor and shut up for a sec.”

“Is… this important? Because if it’s not important, I have other stuff I should probably be doing. I was sorta under the impression that this was gonna be an important call.”

He probably shouldn’t have snapped at Hal. The poor guy’s probably just tired and confused.

“No, I’m sorry, Hal, it’s not really that imp—”

He pauses. Wait a second. Yes, it fucking is.

“No, fucking scratch that. Yes, it’s goddamn important. Just give me a minute.” He sets the phone at his shoulder with his hand over the mic. “Sam, please put your shirt back on.”

Sam rolls his eyes and walks out of the kitchen.

“Who’s Sam? And why does he have his shirt off?” He can’t see Hal right now, but he knows him well enough to know that he’s doing that thing where he squints his eyes and taps his fingers on the table impatiently.

“Not important.”

“It sounds pretty important.”

“Not. Important,” he growls into the phone, before turning to shout at Sam again. “Get out of my fucking bedroom!”

“I need a shirt,” Sam says casually. Wolf flicks his tail and says nothing.

“You _have_ a shirt.”

“Mine got wet.”

“Do you… have a guy over?” Hal asks uncomfortably, euphemism obvious in his voice.

“Do I… what? No!”

“I mean, it’s fine if you do. I just, y’know. Do you two need a moment? To talk, or… whatever?”

“Hal, please stop trying to change the subject.”

“Raiden, bud, this is the only topic you’ve mentioned so far.”

“He’s not — I don’t —”

“Was there something you actually wanted to talk about, or…?”

He takes a deep breath, raking his hair out of his eyes with metal fingertips. “Yeah, there fucking is. Have you casually forgotten to mention that _Snake is alive?"_

There’s a long moment of silence over the line. “I — define ‘alive’?” His voice cuts off nervously.

He sighs deeply and rubs his temples again. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me? What the fuck, Hal?”

“I just — err — about that —”

And Hal hangs up.

“Son of a… that _bastard!”_ he snaps, tossing his phone onto the counter, narrowly missing his cup of tea.

“That sounds like it went well,” calls Sam from the bedroom. His voice carries a playful tone, but a mocking bite hints at its edges.

“Watch it, snippy,” he grumbles, walking over to him, with Wolf following in tow. “And stop digging through my fucking closet.”

“Would you rather I just continue to not have a shirt? I mean, I _am_ very beautiful, but —”

Raiden chucks his discarded shirt at his face. “Put your own shirt on and shut up.”

“No.”

“Why. The hell. _Not.”_

“It is cold enough that I can see my breath in here. I am not going to wear a wet tee-shirt.”

Raiden crosses his arms. “No, it’s not.”

Sam hisses through gritted teeth, sending a faint twirl of fog into the air. “Yes, pretty boy, it is.”

Shit. He wasn’t kidding. “Well, I… I couldn’t possibly have known — look, fucker, I don’t really have human senses like humans do, so I can’t —”

“I see you didn’t open the file on my email.” He raises his brows.

“I don’t even know what that means, and I’m not sure I want to.

He sighs and goes back to his wardrobe-mangling. “There are these interesting new inventions named ‘thermostats’. Also, your clothing is terrible. You need better shirts.”

Raiden rolls his eyes. “Civilian clothes aren’t typically my thing, after the whole… _cyborg_ thing. I only really started wearing them in the past year or so.”

“Aww, look who is _sharing._ But, yes, I noticed, from the lack of…” He gestures vaguely at Raiden’s form. Raiden, who is currently wearing all black — a loose, soft tee and sweatpants rolled up to his knees. There may or may not be pizza sauce on his collar. “Ehh… I am not sure if _roboticness_ is a word, but it seems appropriate, given the general absurdity of American slang.”

“I might say the same about you,” says Raiden, “aside from the arm, obviously. And sternum.”

“Yes. Sternum is new,” he says bluntly.

“Hey, you don’t get to get pissy about that. You cut off my fucking arm.”

“You got a new one.”

“And apparently, you got a new sternum,” snaps Raiden, and Sam bares his teeth.

“Am I here to receive a directive, or were you only attempting to make a point to Raiden, Samuel?” asks Wolf from the doorway.

“Oh. Hi, Blade Wolf,” he greets.

Sam frowns. “That is not his name.”

“I have many names,” says Wolf, “and Blade Wolf is one of them.”

Raiden smirks. “Why? What does Sam call you?”

“He has assigned my name to be ’Sparky’.”

He laughs. “Sam. You… you call the advanced AI weapon _Sparky?”_

“He is an electrical dog. You Americans call dogs things like ‘Rex’, ‘Fido’, and ‘Sparky’ all the time.”

“Why not ‘Rex’, at least?” Raiden asks.

“Samuel expressed a distaste for its association with the bipedal nuclear weapons of the same name,” Wolf explains.

“Fair, fair,” Raiden teases, “but really? Sparky?”

“I was not programmed with the capacity to make jokes, but I can still appreciate the attempt at clever wordplay,” Wolf comments.

“So which do you prefer?” asks Raiden. “Blade Wolf or Sparky?”

“I have no opinion on the matter.”

“You call him _Blade Wolf?”_ Sam mocks. “Then again, you are the same man who chose the name _Raiden,_ so I really shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Whatever you say, _Jetstream,”_ he laughs. “And I didn’t even choose ‘Blade Wolf’. Sunny did.”

“Who is Sunny?” Sam asks.

Raiden glances at him. “I keep forgetting how little you know about me.”

“We are from two very different worlds,” Sam comments, turning back to the closet.

“That’s the weird thing,” he ponders. “We’re really not. Our lives overlap so frequently. It really is strange to see where they don’t.”

Sam hums in agreement and, after seeing a tiny _m_ on the tag, grabs a nice white button-down of its hanger. A very _expensive_ white button-down.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Put that back,” Raiden laughs.

“Jack, dear, you do know that most of your shirts are small, yes? I am not going to wear a small shirt.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“What? _Dear_ or _Jack?”_

He ignores the question and snatches the shirt back.

“What is wrong with the shirt?” Sam pleads.

“This thing is white and very expensive. Knowing your tendencies, it’ll be coated in bloodstains within the hour.”

He looks as if he’s about to protest, but he seems to change his mind, instead hissing more fog from between his teeth. “At the very least, turn a heater on, or place my tee-shirt into a dryer.”

“Alright, alright,” he yields. “Those are just the shirts I’ve put on hangers. I have a bunch of tees over here. And, Wolf, could you find out where the thermostat is and turn it up to… sixty, I guess?

Sam grimaces and turns to Wolf. “Eh, não. Setenta e cinco, por favor.”

“You taught the robo-dog _Portuguese?”_

Wolf flicks his tail. “I am capable of communicating in three hundred of the approximately six thousand living human languages, though my skills in languages beyond the thirty most common are based entirely on computer databases rather than actual usage, and are therefore stiff and rudimentary. Samuel was not responsible for teaching me Portuguese, but he has assisted me in dissecting the Brazilian dialect.”

Raiden raises his brows. “Damn. Three hundred. How many dead languages?”

He pauses for a moment. “Five, to fluency. Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, and Old English.”

“So I could talk to you in French and you’d respond.”

“Oui, c'est ainsi que les langues ont tendance à fonctionner.”

“Oi, ne me sasse pas, _automate.”_

“Please just turn on the heater,” pleads Sam.

Raiden tosses him a different shirt. “Here. Graphic tee. Size medium. I’d prefer that you _didn’t_ get blood on it, as it is still white, but hey, who’s gonna stop you?”

He holds it up in front of himself and looks at the text. “What is ‘The Vaccines’?”

“A band.”

“Oh, really?” He smirks. “Name five of their albums.”

“We are _not_ doing this right now,” he laughs, turning away. “Put on the goddamn shirt.”

“Alright, the shirt is on. Now name five of their albums.”

Raiden rolls his eyes and sits cross-legged on his bed, otherwise undisturbed for months. “They only have three albums, I think.”

Sam undoes his ponytail to fix the loose strands before pulling it back once again. “Name five of their songs, then.”

“I’m not doing this shit with you. This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, so you do not actually listen to their music. You are a fake fan.”

“Fuck off.”

“Name five of their songs.”

“Fine! Possessive, Tiger Blood — hmm.”

“What? Are you admitting defeat?”

“No, shut up, I’m just trying to pick good ones.”

“Ah, yes, _sure_ you are.”

“Wetsuit, I Always Knew, and… err. Denial, I guess.”

“Those sound fake. I do not believe you.”

“You have a goddamn phone, look ‘em up.”

“I am not listening to your stupid hipster music, pretty boy.”

“I’m not asking for you to listen to them, I’m asking you to stop randomly accusing me of lying — Wolf, back me up here,” he calls into the other room.

“I have located the thermostat and activated the heating vents. Any task beyond this is not currently to my interest.”

“I don’t remember him being this sassy. Sam, did you teach the robot how to be sassy?”

He hums in amusement with a smile on his lips. “Maybe. You cannot prove anything.”

\---


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look man i don't make the rules i just enforce them and the rules say that sam and raiden would definitely flirt obnoxiously with each other 24/7  
> fr tho i wanna write some wlw stuff what are some good wlw ships y'all  
> today's song recs: lua by bright eyes and bloodlines pt ii by sir sly

vi.

Raiden is… tense.

Which is odd, because his artificial muscles are, for the most part, incapable of being affected by anxiety. He’s not tense in a literal sense. His motions are not stiffened against his will, not contracted inwards like a tiny bird trying to stay warm in the winter, and yet the only word he can find to describe it is _tense._

He has a reason to be tense, obviously. Blade Wolf has no sense of subtlety in his dramatic timing, Hal’s decided to spend the day (and the past five years, apparently?) being incredibly equivocal and scheming, and apparently Sam’s an actual human disaster, if _human_ is even the right term to use anymore, which is just as fucking stressful. Every question he asks is responded to with shit so vague it opens up half a dozen other questions.

Sam’s breaths are steady and even, a calming tone. He passed out on Raiden’s couch at seven a.m. after doing his best to steal every last blanket in the damn place, which amassed to a grand total of one. He’s still shivering slightly, which Raiden tries his best to ignore. A catnap isn’t a particularly normal thing for early mornings, especially on the couches of sworn enemies and practical strangers, but his sleeping schedule is _terrible,_ so Raiden forgives the small injustice.

An hour and a half ago they were threatening to kill each other. Now Raiden’s watching him sleep. They’re a unique pair.

This all feels like some sort of aftermath.

He was borderline panic attack for a few moments there, during all the chaos — if his body’s even capable of having a panic attack anymore. He hopes he never finds out. Though to be fair, as horrifying of a thought as it is, a tiny, wicked piece of him still wants it to be possible. It’s a very human thing, really, and he’s not sure how to let it go.

He flexes his hand, stretching out the gunmetal knuckles. It feels like nothing at all.

Hmm.

No, not nothing. _Data._ It feels like data, like a mechanical description of a biological thing, no imperfections, no nuance.

He, as an individual, as a human, cannot read binary. But he, an individual, a human, is not the only element contained within his body and mind. The computers hooked up to every piece of his being speak binary. They speak _only_ binary. And when they try to explain this binary over a sequence of wires and electrical signals to his brain, a little something is lost in translation each time.

Sight is a simple enough thing to convert into binary. Digital cameras have been doing it for years. Hooking that up to a human perception is easy as pie. Hell, it’s easy enough that scientists have gotten bored with it, bored with the perfection of the data transfer, and begun to add details — and take them away. His vision is incredible, better than any non-cyborg’s could ever hope to be. Twenty-twenty would look impossibly blurry to him now. But it’s not the perfection that science has found itself capable of creating.

They can only adjust so much to dark and light. Perfect eyes would let him see the dead of a moonless night like it’s daylight. His eyes let him see it like an exceptionally well-moonlit dusk. It’s nice. It works as much as it needs to. But it’s neither perfectly effective nor perfectly human, which is a theme he’s had to get pretty used to over the years.

His hearing is just the same. Sounds is just like light, just wavelengths, very little subjectivity about it. But his programming has intentionally forced some subjectivity. Flawless robot ears could lock onto a butterfly’s wingbeats from miles away. He could only pick up on that from a few feet. Maybe they made it that way to keep him from getting overwhelmed. They failed. It’s still overwhelming sometimes. (Most of the time. But he’s gotten better at tuning it out.)

Scent and taste are… strange. A bit scary. Different than they used to be, and not interconnected anymore, not really. They function on similar systems, like sight and sound, but they don’t overlap like they did back when he was fully human, the combination which allowed for depth of flavor. For a while, everything tasted like it did when he used to get colds. Some bug fixes have made that a bit better since then, but it’s not quite perfect yet. Hence his ongoing tradition of eight million different teas in a single mug. Soul-crushing bitterness is better than eternal bland stuffiness.

(God, what a weird phrase. When he _used_ to get colds. He hasn’t had the sniffles since 2009. How... surreal.)

But scent, though, scent surprised him. Scent is supposed to be so subjective, but it really is just chemicals, isn’t it? The receptors are already binary. They sense methyl cinnamate? Strawberries. Propyl isobutyrate? Rum. Easy-peasy. It’s more complex than that, obviously, but never subjective. There are no noticeable differences in the way the receptors receive smell, except for increased sensitivity.

But they couldn’t just leave it at that. They never could.

They didn’t just hook up new scent receptors to wire directly into his brain. They put it through a processor first. One with a _database._ A database of basic chemicals and their matching sensations, alongside a set of words to describe what objects commonly produce the smell, which his brain now resorts to if it has no memories of what a specific scent is. It’s probably useful in other cyborgs for identifying unknown poisons, explosives, paraphernalia, so on, so forth. It’s not particularly useful to him in daily life. It also managed to scare the _shit_ out of him when he first noticed it.

For example, he has no fucking idea what feijoa is. Not in the slightest. Never heard of it, never seen it, and certainly never smelled it. But he knows _exactly_ what it smells like. Methyl benzoate. Does he have any fucking idea what methyl benzoate is? No, but he does know it’s also found in cocaine hydrochloride and orchid bees. And then the processor accesses his memories, compares and contrasts formulas, and tells him it smells like fruit and perfume, like guava and sun-bathed flowers and almonds from foreign food markets. It tells him exactly what he’s smelling even if he’s never smelled it before.

He found this out the hard way.

He’d walked past a young woman on the street one summer. It had been a long day. Distracted and dazed, he’d simply though, _she’s very pretty. and she smells like methyl benzoate. either she’s a gardener, she cooks cocaine, or she wears feijoa perfume._

And then he’d paused, and tried to process the realization that those thoughts were not his own. He didn’t… he didn’t know what some of those words even _meant._ Those words _weren’t his._

There’s little more gutturally terrifying that your brain suddenly accessing a memory that isn’t yours. He almost started screaming in public. Luckily, he still had the common sense to sit down on a nearby bench and freak out silently and just… just think. Just understand that there was information placed within his brain without his knowledge, and he hadn’t even noticed until that moment.

Which other thoughts in his head aren’t even his? He’s still not entirely sure. Ignorance is bliss, but he’s painfully curious.

But scent is scent. Sound waves are sound waves. Touch, though, touch is different. Touch is subjective. Touch is hurt and fear and sex and softness, non-obligatory but still _necessary,_ if only in the sense that he’s not quite whole without it. But objectively, rationally, mission-wise, he’s worse off _with_ it. Because touch is inefficient, through and through.

His body’s never been great at being inefficient.

If his nerve endings come in contact with a surface, he knows there’s something there. That’s all he ever _needs_ to know. He has no concept of its temperature, its texture, its give. Touches, they don’t tempt or warn or comfort. They just exist. It’s a yes or no question. _Yes, you are touching something,_ or _no, you aren’t_.

If he’s at risk of injury, he pulls back. It’s reflex. If he resists this reflex, he experiences an unpleasant, mild urge to move away from the source of harm. If it's bad enough, he feels a sense of panic. If he's injured, he knows what’s hurt, so he can fix it. Severe burns are the closest he gets to remembering hot from cold, but if you blindfolded him, he wouldn’t have the slightest hint as to which was which. For a while, with the nanobots, he wasn't even granted that much unless they were deliberately shut off.

It’s the bare necessities. Pain broken down to its rawest essentials.

It’s all perfectly efficient.

Sometimes he’s grateful. Plenty of people experience daily chronic pain that he wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemies. Hell, the sword to the gut back in his older mech-y body wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining had the pain been real, been complete. But mostly, he’s just bitter. He had something taken from him. Good or bad doesn’t matter. He just wants it back.

And now, Sam’s here shivering, sprawled on the sofa under the thin comforter stolen from his bed. Raiden doesn’t even remember what it feels like to shiver, but he knows he never liked it. The heater’s apparently not warming the room very quickly, even turned to max, and his hair’s still a bit wet, which certainly can’t be fun. Idiot should’ve worn a jacket.

Raiden drapes one of his coats across Sam’s side, an old wool trench which he’s had for ages and ages, drenched in the scent of singed plastic and white-hot iron but still in remarkably good shape. The shivering doesn’t stop immediately, but it does fade over time as his breaths grow steadier.

He decides to cook himself breakfast. His body is still semi-powered from calorie intake, and he hasn’t eaten in… well, a while. Too long.

He’ll make some eggs. Scrambled, maybe. Those are easiest.

He’s got… eggs, obviously. Milk. Salt. Pepper. Err… cheese, maybe? Yeah, cheese. He has no green onions. That’s something people usually put into eggs, right? Oh well. No green onions.

He whisks them together loosely with a fork and tosses them into a pan, stirring every once in a while to keep it from burning, but it sticks to the pan anyways.

Someone’s standing behind him.

It’s not a startling thought. He heard Sam’s footsteps the second they started. Hell, he heard the change in his breathing as he woke up. But it’s still unusual, unnatural to him, sharing a space with someone in a place that’s been otherwise empty for months, physically, and a hell of a lot longer than that emotionally. Even with Rose, their home felt so — so _empty_ sometimes. She’s still one of his dearest friends, but her presence never really clicked with him the way they both pretended it did. He cared about her deeply, still does, but he wasn’t in love with her, nor she with him. Those things don’t always work out nicely. Even less so with a life as disastrous as his, and a start as rocky as theirs.

Having someone standing behind him once again is strange in an indescribably comforting way.

“You are doing that wrong,” Sam mumbles groggily, frowning.

The coat is still slung over his shoulders, and his hair is dried and tangled, much wavier than it had been before. He looks tired, but no longer lethally so. Soft, almost, if Sam’s capable of such a thing.

“Doing what wrong? Cooking eggs?”

“Yes,” he grumbles, and turns the flame off on the stovetop.

“Excuse me, asshole, they’re not done.”

Sam huffs. “You have overcooked them already. My god, did you put milk in these? No, no, these are going in the garbage. Inedible. Terrible.”

Raiden scoffs as Sam steals the hot pan from him and tosses them in the trash. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Gordon Ramsay?”

“No, but he is a very good man. I appreciate him.”

He glares incredulously. “You’re insane.”

“No, I am simply much better at cooking than you.” Sam rummages through his cabinets until he finds a clean bowl, which he sets on the countertop. “How much egg do you want?”

“How.. what?”

He gestures at the carton. “How much egg?”

“Do you mean how _many_ eggs?”

Sam shrugs vaguely, cleaning off the pan and drying it. “No, no really. I do not need a number, just a vague amount.”

“Err — a medium amount of egg?”

“Okay,” he says, opening the fridge.

He raises his brows, glances concernedly over at Raiden, and then looks back into the fridge.

“You… Jack, what is this? What is in your refrigerator? In the saline bags, I mean.”

Raiden tilts his head. “You mean the blood? That would be my blood.”

“This is not blood. It is silver, almost colorful. Like mother of pearl. What is the word? _Iridescente?”_

“Yeah, that’s just what my blood looks like sometimes. It was black in one of my bodies, white in another. That was cool. I still like red best, though,” he muses.

“Yes, great, why is it in your fridge?”

He shrugs. “In case.”

“In case of what?” Sam asks, squinting.

He shrugs again.

“You are… a strange man. Where is the butter kept?”

“Countertop.”

“Aha. I found it.”

“Please don’t waste any more eggs.”

“I did not waste a single one. You wasted them by burning them. And adding milk, like an idiot. I am going to cook them beautifully.”

“At least explain what you’re doing,” Raiden teases. “This is my house, my food, my oven.”

“You killed me. I think that grants me full access to your kitchen.”

“I didn’t kill you. You’re alive,” he points out.

“Interesting argument. I am still going to steal your food.”

“Ever gonna tell me how you survived?”

“Not a chance, dear. Pass me a knife.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“No, I do not think I will.”

He moves with neither the urgency nor the precision of a professional chef, but Raiden can still tell that he’s familiar with the workings of a chaotic kitchen. Even with Raiden’s disaster of a pantry and constant nagging, he seems confident in his own ability to prepare something edible. To be fair, Sam seems confident in essentially every situation Raiden’s seen him in, but it’s still notable.

“Used to be a fry cook or something?” he asks Sam, attempting to hand him the milk jug.

He swats it away with a sigh. “No. I had siblings. Cousins as well. I cooked for them when I was young.”

“Had?”

“Surely you can put two and two together, yes?”

He frowns. “Dead?”

Sam nods. “Dead. Do you have any more eggs, or just the four?”

“I have a whole other carton in the fridge, so go nuts.”

_“Splendid.”_

Raiden hands him the new carton as he cracks three of the eggs into the bowl. “I’m sorry. About your siblings, I mean.”

“Your talking is annoying. You should do that less.”

He huffs in frustration and leans over the bowl. “You got a bit of shell in here.”

“Yes, that happens sometimes.”

“Want me to fish it out with a spoon?”

“Absolutely not. Stupid boy. Use an eggshell.”

“Use a shell… to get a piece of shell out?”

“Yes. The shell sticks to the other shell. Like magnets.”

“Ah. Neat trick.”

He does it himself and tosses the remnants into the trash. “Do you know how to separate eggs?”

“You mean, like, crack them? Yeah, I’m pretty sure everyone knows how to do that.”

“No. Separate yolks.”

“Why? Do you need extra yolks for something?”

“You put twice as many yolks in as eggs. It makes the eggs creamy, you know? Three full eggs, plus three yolks more.”

“Sounds pretentious.”

“You are so bland. Do you know how or not?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Would you like to learn how?”

He laughs. “I can certainly try.”

“Come here. You will probably ruin the first one, so get a separate bowl.”

“Ye of little faith.”

“I do not know what that means, but shut the hell up and get over here.”

“Alright, alright! Sheesh.”

He walks over to Sam and steals the jacket from his shoulders, tossing it over to the sofa apathetically. Sam grimaces.

“Be nice, pretty boy. It is still cold in here.”

“The heat’s set to seventy-five, and I don’t want you getting raw egg on my nice jacket, asshole.”

“Your heater is terrible. It is sixty-five, at most.”

“Shut up and teach me how to make eggs already,” he grumbles lightly, elbowing Sam in the side, in a way he hopes seems casual despite the constant calculation required to prevent his motions from being legitimately lethal.

Their interactions are like that for a while — Sam snipping at him, him sassing back, sometimes sharing little things about themselves, but never mentioning their shared past besides mild, one-off jabs.

He’s still clumsy, despite his precisely calibrated body, if only out of a sheer lack of knowledge in all things cooking. It takes him three tries to separate a yolk without breaking it, and still manages to get a hell of a lot of shell in the bowl regardless, but he gets a hang of it quickly enough. Sam does that stupid thing, that thing where he places his hands at the back of Raiden’s and tries to guide their motions with his own, and it doesn’t work in the slightest but it’s painfully endearing and Raiden can’t remember why he would ever, under any circumstances, stab this man in the heart. And the stupid part of his brain shuts the fuck up, and he actually thinks about it, and _yes,_ to be fair, he did have a very good reason.

The eggs are nice. He personally can’t taste much of a difference, but they’re a beautiful bright yellow and he doesn’t feel an immediate compulsion to drown them in salt and pepper, so it’s certainly an improvement on his own personal attempts.

Sam raids his cabinets and salvages some instant coffee packets, pouring three into a cup of scalding hot water before Raiden manages to get them away from him.

He sips at his nightmare-drink quietly, walking around the place without deliberate aim, as Raiden grips his phone maybe-too-tight, staring at a blank spot on the wall while he tries desperately not to ruminate too much on Hal and Sunny and their never-ending flux of drama. He loves them dearly, but he’ll be damned if they aren’t disasters sometimes. Most of the time. Almost always, actually. They’re lucky he loves them so much.

Sam stands behind him again, as he’s shown a strong tendency to do over the past few hours, and moves his hand to the nape of Raiden’s neck, maybe a comforting gesture, maybe not.

“Need a distraction?” Sam asks quietly, fingertips grazing down the length of Raiden’s spine. Perfectly symmetrical. And despite everything, despite the mechanics of it all, he swears he almost shivers.

Sam’s… _implying_ something. He’s implying something and Raiden knows he should step away, think more clearly, but he stands his ground. Out of curiosity. Purely curiosity, and nothing else.

“What did you have in mind?” he asks back, tone flirting on the edge of something dangerous.

Sam leans nearer, and his hand shifts slightly at the small of Raiden’s back. Digging his nails in, maybe. He can’t tell.

“Let us spar,” Sam suggests sweetly, voice mingling with the subsiding rain. “A fair fight.”

“Now, that wouldn’t actually be very fair, would it?” he asks, twisting to face him. He moves Sam’s nails to his wrist instead, pressing them in hard, drawing little crescents of silvery blood before he finally lets Sam pull them away. “You’d cut me and I wouldn’t even flinch.”

Sam smiles lightly. A warning. A temptation.

“Would you like to change that?”

\---

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are my fuel, thank u all so much


End file.
